Releasing software under commercial license

ve

Quick questions...

1) If my company or I develop a piece of software which we/I wish to sell under commercial license, how do I go about establishing the licensing terms (the EULA)? and any other legalities?

2) Are there any organisations in Ireland that will help (for free) with that sort of thing?

What are the processes involved. E.g. I have a software prototype developed (which works), I wish to package up, and market to my customers.

3) What do I have to do so that I can sell this software for profit and enforce that my customers use the software within typical legal boundaries.?
E.g. do not make derived works from the software, or make available copies to others, amongst other typical things you would expect under a commercial license.

4) Finally is there a typical commercial licensing structure that you simply slap on your product or do you have to sit down with a legal team and trash out a unique licensing model for every piece of software or service? If so, what can you expect to pay for this service?

Cheers

All I know is you definitely need to copyright it!

http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/copyright_whatis.aspx

Also check out http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/

adrian.s

I'll take a stab at this for ya,

ve wrote: »

Quick questions...

1) If my company or I develop a piece of software which we/I wish to sell under commercial license, how do I go about establishing the licensing terms (the EULA)? and any other legalities?

You'll need to figure out what the fair use of the software would be in your mind and put together a licensing agreement for that. So, are you supplying the software to a company and they can put it on as many machines as they like, or is it per machine, per server etc. Can they resell, redistribute? What support are you providing should anything go wrong (it can be none). Are they entitled to upgrades etc. So the long and short of it is that it's up to you to decide what the user agreement will be, which of course makes the answer to your next question easier!

2) Are there any organisations in Ireland that will help (for free) with that sort of thing?


What are the processes involved. E.g. I have a software prototype developed (which works), I wish to package up, and market to my customers.

No organizations will do this for free, but maybe start by looking at what companies distributing software similar to yourself are doing and see what terms they have.

3) What do I have to do so that I can sell this software for profit and enforce that my customers use the software within typical legal boundaries.?
E.g. do not make derived works from the software, or make available copies to others, amongst other typical things you would expect under a commercial license.

Best bet is to put some form of license mechanism into your software, and supply a key to the customer which allows them to run that version of the software. Don't forget to make this super tested code, last thing you want is customers having problems with your license mechanism. Regards enforcement of the license terms, that's going to have to be your call.

4) Finally is there a typical commercial licensing structure that you simply slap on your product or do you have to sit down with a legal team and trash out a unique licensing model for every piece of software or service? If so, what can you expect to pay for this service?

I'll leave this to somebody else. But I don't believe there is anything to fit your needs here.

Maybe, instead of putting very strict terms on your EULA, you could provide it using an OSI approved open source license and charge a fee for supporting it. You could make it available under GPL which will dissuade companies from reselling or making derived works. Then you could have your commercial variant if they wanted to do those tasks with it.

Hope this helps.

Adrian.

antoinolachtnai

i think eula's are fairly generic at this point, there's very little need for anything custom. it does depend on what you are selling though, and you should probably get legal advice if you are not sure.